Piling On

My little Spartan got a ticket the weekend of the Big Game. I know about that because a thick packet came in the mail yesterday from the management company, and it contained the citation.

I read it carefully as I undid my tie. This was serious business, and the words from the management company that owns the house where my son lives were grave and ominous. My Spartan was named in the ticket because he is on the lease; the childish scrawl of the policeman noted there was loud noise and fifty people as in the front yard.

 It did not say that they were drinking, nor in any other manner contravening a breach of the peace.

It sounded like a lawful assembly, to me, but perhaps the police office was being circumspect, since it would require evidence to prove anything else. Presence and noise is the crime.

Fifty is a lot of people, more than the calculus of resident times guest that makes up the city’s new law.

But of course there were 60,000 people in the stadium that day, and they made a lot of noise. That gathering that was encouraged, so long as they are the way the University wants them. I got a chill when I read the letter that accompanied the ticket. The Management company will start proceedings to have the boys evicted if there is another offense.

I thought it was three strikes before you were out, but apparently the rules have changed. The University has declared war on binge drinking, and rowdy behavior after football and basketball games. The Administration has succeeded in pushing the students off campus, where it has no jurisdiction.

So they have pressed the city to enact strict laws making the management companies responsible for such behavior, and that, in effect, pushes the responsibility off to someone else. It is a beautiful strategy, undoubtedly crafted by a lawyer.

The City has hired a bunch of cops to drive around and look at the kids, going after concentrations of them in the private houses that surround campus.

There is a network of informants on the blocks where the kids rent houses that tip off the cops. It is sort of like the Stasi in the old East Germany, or the informers in Havana that keep the Government on top of things . Examples have to be made.

Naturally, after I read the indictment, I called my Spartan up and read him the Riot Act. Even if he gets the boot and has to live out of his truck, the rent still must be paid. I told him I was not going to be responsible for the debt, even though I am. Maybe he doesn’t know that, and maybe he and his buddies will settle down. Maybe they can live another two semesters of quiet dread that someone will rat them out to the Authorities.

But of course he has his senior year to complete, and he will be of legal age to do what he wants in just a few months.

I remember when the riot broke out when the University announced a ban on alcohol at Munn Field a few years ago. That is where the kids used to gather to start tailgating hours before the football games would start. According to my Spartan, they were pretty colorful, and started as early as 6:00am for serious games.

Sometimes they made it all the way through the game before they had to take a nap. And after significant victories or losses, some of the students would drag old furniture out on the streets and set fire to them. East Lansing was known as the town of burning couches, particularly after their basketball team won the NCAA Tournament.

The Administration decided that action had to be taken to save the reputation of a great school. The problem, at its root, was alcohol. On the day of the ban, Police barred students from entering the field, and things got out of hand quickly. Eventually they poured out into City streets, and the police-provoked riot was put down by riot-gear clad police.

I remember the riots from my days at school, and the Stasi-tactics of the local prosecutor and the County Sheriff . Doug Harvey was the lawman, a square block of a man with a Marine-style brush cut and a hatred for “hippies.” I will never forget him or his riot-clad troops.

But the disturbances were about something else; a war or something, I forget what. I don’t think it was about kegs. I would like to think it was about liberty, but it was a long time ago, and I think we were intoxicated on rebellion.

So I could not be too hard on my Spartan. He also said they were innocent, and they didn’t even have a CD player to make the noise the cop wrote them up for. He said they are going to get a Legal Service lawyer to plead their day in court.

The college experience is an education, and it mostly happens outside the walls. He is doing well enough in academics. I hope he doesn’t have to live in his truck this winter.

But that is the way the University has decided to play ball, in the name of a greater good. But it is a foul in football to pile onto an opponent who is down, and the weight of the school and the city and the cops against my Spartan doesn’t seem fair.

Which of course, it is not. But it is part of the education.

Copyright 2005 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

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